Retail items are sold in a variety of different ways. For example, a barcode on an item to be sold is scanned by a barcode scanner and the price is looked up in a price look-up (PLU) table. A point of sale (POS) terminal builds up a list of items and prices as items are scanned and a total price and itemized receipt are generated in a known manner. Other items are sold by weight, quantity, length or the like.
A wide variety of self-checkout apparatus and solutions have been proposed and adopted over the past decade or so. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,286,758; 7,466,231; 7,575,162; 7,533,799; 7,620,568; 7,673,796; and 7,673,797, all of which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
Focusing, by way of example, on the sale of items, such as produce, by weight at a self-service checkout terminal, a common workflow is as follows. The item is scanned or selected from a pictorial list of items presented in a visual list. The resulting item code is presented to an embedded POS terminal, either locally or remotely, or alternately to a store controller. The item attributes are returned from the POS or store controller. These attributes indicate that a weight must be provided before sale of the item can be completed.
The customer is directed to place the item on a produce scale where it is weighed. The item weight is read from the produce scale and provided to the POS terminal or the store controller. The item sale is completed by the POS terminal or store controller. The electronic receipt is updated with the time information and pricing. The transaction sub-totals are updated based on the item sale.
Unfortunately, weight measurement errors do occur and sometimes the weight measurement of the item to be purchased is wrong. A first effect of this error is that the weight of the item to be purchased is wrong resulting in a pricing error. A second effect is that the weight of the item measured by the produce scale can be substantially different from the weight later measured from a bagging security scale resulting in the security system monitoring the transaction to conclude that the item bagged is not the same item which was originally weighed on the produce scale, that the amount of the item has changed, or that some other situation has occurred which requires flagging and attendant intervention thereby bringing the self-checkout process to a halt.
When a weight mismatch occurs for a weighed product, the attendant intervenes to review the event and render a decision to ignore the condition by accepting the weight mismatch or to oversee correction of the weighing and pricing of the weight required item.
The typical steps required to correct such a condition are somewhat time consuming. First, the attendant moves to the lane with the issue. Next, the attendant logs into the self-service checkout terminal in a privileged mode often by scanning an operator ID. The attendant removes the weight mismatched item from the bagging area security scale, and then voids the sale of the item at the incorrect weight. The attendant then exits the self-checkout privileged mode, and places the item correctly on the produce scale. The attendant or customer can now reselect the item typically from a visual item list of produce items for sale. The correct weight is measured and the item is correctly sold. The shopper is then free to bag the item. The security system approves the produce scale weight measurement as matching the bagging area scale weight measurement, and the self-checkout continues with subsequent items, if any.
Because resolution of the issue as just described is rather tedious and time consuming, the attendant may choose the fast and easy approach of simply approving the incorrect item weight measurement, thereby resulting in an uncorrected pricing error being part of the transaction. Worse yet, customers experiencing such delay may choose not to use the self-checkout system.